Tackling API sprawl: an area the channel can make a difference

There has been a lot of discussion across the channel for the need for customers to start the journey to artificial intelligence (AI) by focusing on the data foundations. That challenge is not just a question of breaking down siloes, with the large number of applications most customers are running also posing challenges to getting users embarked on an AI strategy.

Dan McAllister, senior vice-president of global alliances and channels at Boomi, said there is an opportunity for the channel to identify the challenges customers are experiencing and to come armed with ways to navigate through those issues.

“Over the past 10 or 15 years, there’s been massive applications across enterprises, and for lots of good reasons. There’s been a lot of technology advancements and great ways for companies to deliver more value and better experiences for their customers. The demand for [apps] has led to that type of sprawl,” he said.

“Typically, they were deployed with sometimes best-of-breed integration tools – sometimes whatever’s in the box, sometimes bespoke hand coding – but the result of that has been a challenge for most companies in governance and organisation.”

McAllister said the sprawl of APIs, with most companies using hundreds if not thousands across their organisations, was a consideration for partners looking to unlock the data layer to create foundations for the deployment of AI agents.

“[There is] pressure to be more efficient for cost savings to standardise, and that is certainly coming to the integration automation space. Even better is that with the emergence of AI, it’s getting easier to do, and so you have the emergence of more best-of-breed tools,” said McAllister.

An example of what that partnership looks like is seen in the firm’s relationship with DXC, with the pair helping the partner to establish a centre of excellence leaning on both the vendor’s expertise and its internal resources.

“We wanted to do is bring these individuals and consultants together in a common, core centre of excellence. We wanted to invest in that, so we brought some of our own services, consultants and our best talent, and gave them to DXC to help form the new class in this practice, and then drive greater expansion, so that we can move much more quickly,” said McAllister.

James Taylor, global general manager of enterprise applications and offering leader at DXC, said it was working with numerous customers and had encountered sprawl and recognised a need to alleviate those problems. “Our responsibility is to try and do the right thing for our customers, and we truly feel that by getting the foundations in place, it does set you up for success,” he said.

He added that when customers ran into problems, it was often as a result of a lack of a foundation strategy, but an increasing number of CIOs are starting to understand the need for a different approach.

McAllister added that as well as helping to untangle sprawl and help introduce agentic AI options, there were further opportunities for partners that could provide security and control to reduce risk across networks. “The security and governance and control layer [on top of the ability to design AI agents] is extremely important,” he added.